ANNABELLA’S WORKSHOPS

For Teachers, EC Educators, and Academics

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.

Albert EinsteinLiving Philosophies, 1931

NEW Workshop: Unswaddling Pedagogy

How to prevent and overcome gaps in early childhood education

In very practical, joyful, playful ways, the workshop will engage with the concepts and practices of swaddling, unswaddling and non-swaddling pedagogies, bringing into the attention of the audience the pivotal role of early education in the designs of life. The presentation will also focus on the “missing beginnings”- the reasons why there is a globally present disconnect between early education and school education. Dr. Annabella Cant will share findings from her doctoral journey in order to motivate the audience to think with the concepts and better understand the privilege of working with young children. She will continue the conversation on the introduced concepts in and will share two examples of swaddling pedagogies: the “Moulding” one and the “Not-yet” one. Also she will introduce the theory and practice of Imaginative Education – a pedagogy that she considers close to being unswaddling – together with her own contributions to it, contributions that emphasize the period at the beginning of life: 0 to 5. Participants will get a glimpse of children’s genuine capacity for openness and wonder by feeling it themselves. Annabella will remind her participants how to be joyful, playful and open, and why these states of mind provoke deep and long-lasting learning in children.

“Children taught me how to practice, and adults taught me how to talk about practice.” Annabella

NEW WORKSHOP: A Composition of Wonder

Exploration of sound, music and movement

By Violet Jessen and Annabella Cant

Duration: 2hr or 4hr

The sense of wonder is one of the most natural and present abilities of all children. The power to explore the world using all senses should always be cherished and fully utilized in childcare centers, as the BC Early Learning Framework suggests.
Our workshop will engage with the sense of hearing and the power of sound as a learning tool. Sound is a pedagogical material that, even if untouchable, is always present . Children feel, see, and acknowledge sound in a multitude of ways.
Through conversation and hands-on provocations, we hope to uncover questions and make discoveries through experiments with sound, music and movement applying multiple mediums both conventional and unusual.

Workshop: Professional Development for EC educators & elementary teachers

Wonderfully Connected Education

We, teachers, are privileged. We are some of the few adults who are still able to enjoy pure moments of wonder. We have not grown up by closing the wings of imagination for the sake of serious rationality. We dream, we laugh, and we work loving. What makes us privileged? Who minds our capacity for awe? Who are our guides? You guessed it: children. Their immediate vicinity makes us better humans. So, let us promise ourselves that we will do everything possible and impossible to keep our children’s power to wonder alive.

This workshop is dedicated to the prevention and resolution of possible gaps and disconnects within the education of young children. It reminds us how to slow down, enjoy our time with children and co-create knowledge with them. The atmosphere of the workshop is collaborative; Annabella considers that there are valuable lessons to be learned from each other and that sharing expertise and passion will provoke the drive to become more reflective and more creative practitioners.

Participants will get a glimpse of children’s genuine capacity for openness and wonder by feeling it themselves. Annabella will remind her participants how to be joyful, playful and open, and why these states of mind provoke deep and long-lasting learning in children.

Workshop: Wonder-Full Education

Wonder is a natural endowment that is palpable in early childhood, transparent in school aged children and invisible in adults. Wonder is a special kaleidoscopic lens that helps us be astonished, surprised, touched and emotionally engaged. The ability to feel, see and provoke wonder should be one of the main didactic competencies of EC educators. Most successful educational theories employ the infusion of wonder into their philosophy.

This workshop is demonstrating teachers the importance of wonder in ECE. Through multiple hands-on activities, games and group tasks, participants will be shown strategies that help keeping wonder alive in children and fortify this innate foundation of childhood against later social and cultural strains. Participating in this workshop will help educators be able to see the “wonders” of the usual and to erase the dangers of a routinized teaching.

This workshop is bringing a multitude of games and exercises that are meant to help teachers rediscover and redevelop their own divergent abilities in order to be able to keep alive and foster these extremely helpful didactic tools. All activities will be suitable to both children and adults. We will end with the presentation of a few, ready-to-use, imaginative cognitive tools that will initiate teachers in some of the most important aspects of Egan’s Imaginative Education Philosophy.

Workshop: Divergent Thinking and Imaginative Education

This workshop is about how the divergent thinking capacities of young children an methods of discovering and fostering these abilities both in children and teachers. One of the principles of my method is that education has to begin in the soul of the teacher. Teachers need to find an emotional connection to the material they are teaching about, in order for children to grasp its importance. Teachers need to look into their childhood and bring back those “magical” powers they have lost along the way by growing up. This opening will connect them to the pedagogical content and will make them teach it in a natural and effortless way. This kind of early education is wonderfully received by children who feel this important connection. If educators are genuinely passionate about the curricular content children will feel motivated and willing to feel the same passion.

Workshop: Introduction to Learning in Depth

Annabella offers LiD workshops to introduce LiD in any educational institution. There is as well the possibility to have a two-hour introductory discussion online (Skype, Facetime or Google hangouts).

Annabella can set up a program of support for a school or for a group of teachers who will be involved in implementing LiD.

Workshop: How Imagination can inform Inclusion

Inclusion is a difficult concept and an even more difficult reality. Early childhood educators do struggle with “applying”, “adapting”, “designing” inclusion in their classrooms. Sometimes this struggle comes from the feelings of helplessness, loneliness, and lack of self-confidence. These feelings are fueled by the lack of time, lack of resources, and mostly… stress.

This workshop/presentation will walk the participants though a multitude of practical and theoretical aspects of inclusion that will try to shift some of the usual misconceptions and fears around this complex aspect of the ECCE everyday-pedagogy. Annabella will introduce the participants to the theory if Imaginative Education and will demonstrate and invite the audience to practice, along with her, some of applications of the somatic cognitive tools. These tools will help teachers see inclusion in a new way.

Be ready to move, create rhythms, build some tools and have a lot of fun!